Mud

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie star in Robert Altman's “anti-western”. John McCabe is a drunken gambler with a dream and that dream is building a whore house to turn the down trodden and mud filled small mining town of Presbyterian Church into something more. As McCabe is a drunk and a dreamer he needs the practical knowledge of ruthlessly efficient prostitute Mrs Miller to really fulfil the potential of his money making schemes.

The brothel becomes a high quality sporting house and eventually McCabe ends up owning the majority of the small town thanks to Mrs Millers good business sense. With success comes the attention of big business who are keen to buy up or push McCabe out and his reluctance to make a deal leads to the inevitable finale confrontation which is excellently shot in the snow. The film is beautifully shot although the choice of using natural lighting only means some of the internal sequences are a little dark.

While Altman set out to try and subvert a number of western conventions this film does share some themes with previous westerns such as High Noon (1952) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), the citizens decide to save the local church which is on fire rather than help McCabe and it is the arrival of a large company which causes the end of the western “ideal”.

It is very hard to find anything wrong with this movie 5/5.